Five Questions for Stephen Kotkin: Advice for the New Administration (and the Rest of Us)

Stephen Kotkin is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and one of the most preeminent historians in the world. In this installment of Five Questions for Stephen Kotkin, he explores the reelection of Donald Trump, debating whether it represents a fluke or a seismic shift in American politics, while contextualizing this within a broader discussion of global democracy, as 2024 saw significant elections across many of the world’s most populous nations.

The conversation also delves into the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, analyzing Vladimir Putin’s strategic missteps, the challenges of authoritarian regimes, and the potential paths to resolution. Additionally, Kotkin addresses the rising tensions in the Middle East, particularly Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Israel’s response, emphasizing the importance of strategy in achieving lasting peace. Throughout, Kotkin’s sharp historical perspective provides a nuanced analysis of the intersections between leadership, governance, and global stability.

Recorded on January 9, 2025.

Episode Transcript

>> Peter Robinson (00:01):
Whenever this remarkable historian and I get together,
the rules are always the same,I get to ask any five questions I want.
He has no idea what I'm going to ask.
And to be honest,I'm not entirely sure myself.
Stephen Kotkin on Uncommon Knowledge now.

(00:21):
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
I'm Peter Robinson, a senior fellow atthe Hoover Institution here at Stanford.
Stephen Kotkin represents one of thenation's most accomplished historians and
one of its most fascinating analysts.
The author of half a dozenmajor works of history, Dr.

(00:44):
Kotkin is now at work on the third andfinal volume of his definitive
biography of Joseph Stalin,a new year, a new administration.
Today five questions for 2025.
Stephen let's start withthe presidential election.
Two arguments, here's one,Donald Trump's reelection was a one off.

(01:07):
A weakened Joe Biden remainedin the race until he couldn't.
He handed the nomination to an evenweaker candidate, Kamala Harris.
Trump wins the Electoral College inthe popular vote, but you know what?
His polls never break 50%.
He wins the popular vote, butagain with a smidgen of under 50%.
It's a one off, a fluke.

(01:27):
Here's the second argument,this follows analyst Henry Olson,
exit polls showed that morevoters identified themselves as
Republicans than as Democrats forthe first time since 1932.
Donald Trump won a full onethird of the non-white vote,

(01:48):
a historic margin for a Republican.
In heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade County,Florida, which Biden carried with
54% of the vote four years ago,Trump wins with 55% of the vote.
In Starr County, Texas,a county that is 98% Hispanic,
Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 16 points,which is the first time a Republican

(02:12):
presidential candidate carriedStarr County in a century.
Something big happened.
It wasn't a one off.
Which argument is right.

>> Stephen Kotkin (02:23):
Peter, it's great to be back.

>> Peter Robinson (02:25):
[LAUGH] >> Stephen Kotkin
It has been too long, Stephen.

>> Stephen Kotkin (02:28):
Thank you for bringing me back.

>> Peter Robinson (02:29):
It has been too long.

>> Stephen Kotkin (02:31):
It's wonderful.
That's the question Iwould have asked you.
I'm not good enough to besitting in your chair.
I don't have the interviewing skills.
I mean,I can do some of the prep like you do, but
I don't have the skill set you have.
But if I had been in that chair andyou had been in this one,
that's what I'd be asking you.

(02:52):
So let's pan out.
You know my style.
2024, one of the greatest years for
democracy is in recorded history.
Eight of the ten most populouscountries voted in national elections,
the only two that didn't voteof the most populous were China,

(03:16):
which of course has no system of allowingthe people to choose their leaders, and
Brazil, because Brazil had had theirnational election before 2024.
But otherwise everybody went to the polls.
Sure, in some cases,the polls aren't real,
like in the case of Russia,but in most cases they were.

(03:39):
So you had half of the adultpopulation of the planet
was able to voice their views this year.
So if you are a proponent of democracy,
you just live through one ofthe great fantasy years of all time.
And yet a lot of the conversation is about

(04:02):
crisis of democracy, threats to democracy,
democratic erosion ordemocratic backsliding.
And so what's going on here?
And then let's get to the American case,
a lot of analysts confuserejection of their preferences

(04:24):
at the polls with some kindof crisis of democracy.

>> Peter Robinson (04:28):
Do they ever?

>> Stephen Kotkin (04:31):
That's a sad but pervasive phenomenon.
There can be crises indemocratic governance, and
there were some issues forsure this year that are really important.
But when that many people,eight of the ten most populous countries,

(04:51):
more than 2 billion adults,half the adult population of
the planet gets to vote,something good has happened.
And so that's the first anddeepest and most important point.
Sure, we could look at Venezuela and howthe election was won by the opposition,
but the regime in power falsified it andrefused to admit,

(05:15):
even though the opposition provedwith the numbers that they had won.
And Venezuela is a challenge forthe incoming administration,
especially today as we speak,one of the leaders of the opposition,
Machado, was arrested in Venezuela today.

(05:37):
So there's a lot of that stuff,but let's be honest,
it was a great year for democracy.
And the democratic erosion,backsliding narrative took a beating.
The other people who tooka beating were incumbents.
Incumbents of all kinds took a beating.
And that's because governmentis not working that well.

(06:01):
It's not working that well formajorities of people.
It's working for some, but not for enough.
And so incumbents on the right andincumbents on the left,
the Tory Party in the UK.

>> Peter Robinson (06:12):
The Tory has been blown away in Britain.

>> Stephen Kotkin (06:14):
Their worst loss ever in almost 200 years of
the existence of that fantastic party,
probably the oldest party stillin existence in the world.
And in the US the Democrats got punished,and
they got punished brutally, andthey deserved that punishment.

(06:38):
And the vehicle for that punishment atthe national level was Donald Trump.
But it happened not just nationallyat the federal election level,
you had in Ohio, Democratic SenatorSherrod Brown, an incumbent was punished.
You had in Pennsylvaniathe victory of McCormick,

(07:00):
who had lost the last time around in theprimary process on the Republican side,
he won in Pennsylvania, okay, by the skinof his teeth but nonetheless, he won.
And we could point to other examples.
Not every case were the incumbentspunished, but in many, many cases.

(07:21):
The thing about democracy is voterscannot always get what they want, but
they can punish what's in frontof them for failing to deliver.
And we had that election.
So millions of people voted forDonald Trump because of who he is and
what he represents and what they think,or at least hope he might do.

(07:45):
And millions more punishedthe Democrats for who they are,
what they've been doing, orwhat they've been failing to do.
Whether that punishmentsinks in remains to be seen.
Now, as far, As far as your question,
was this a Trump victory andis it an enduring shift?

>> Peter Robinson (08:06):
Correct, yes.

>> Stephen Kotkin (08:07):
Well, we don't know yet.
Too early to tell,as Zhou Enlai supposedly said about
the French Revolution morethan a century afterward.
So it could well be thatDonald Trump is able to consolidate
some new quasi-organization of Americanpolitics the way Roosevelt did in 1932 and

(08:33):
after until Reagan,as you pointed out in your question.
Is Trump capable of that?
Is the country on the cusp of that?
Those are questions more forpeople like yourself.
Remember, I'm only a voter.
My expertise on American politics as youknow, is really just two days a year,

(08:56):
that first Tuesday in November and April15th when I become expert on America.
So Trump could well misread his mandate.
So Biden comes into office,narrow election,
a few swing states,a few tens of thousand votes

(09:18):
in the swing states, a 50-50 Senate, and
he decides he's the incarnation of LBJ ormaybe FDR.
And of course, we know what kind ofmajorities they had in this congress.
And so that was a delusion onthe part of Biden and his team.

(09:43):
And that delusion waspunished as we just said.
It was punished in the formof his vice president.
But the punishment might even havebeen greater for him had he stayed in.
So now Trump is in a position wherehow does he read what happened?
Does he overreach?
Does he decide that several ten thousandsof votes in the seven swing states,

(10:07):
all of which he won,indicates that America is ready for
an enduring,multi-generational grand transformation?
Or are we still a 50-50 country where thevoters are poised to punish the incumbents
should they fail to deliver at the firstopportunity they have to punish them.

(10:29):
We'll live to see that soon.
I hope I'm on your show againbefore we live to see that.
But it's coming.
And so one can be optimistic aboutthe larger trajectory of America and
still be cautious aboutany massive realignment.
You live through a realignment.
You had a front row seat.

(10:50):
You know what a realignmentreally looks like.
And so you're in a good position.
You have an intuitive feel for this.
So it's possible.
I mean, it's there.
It's there for the potential taking,but it doesn't happen automatically,
as you know.

>> Peter Robinson (11:09):
Right, Russia and Ukraine still.
It's still going on.
Through last September,the United States had appropriated
more than $180 billion in military andother aid to Ukraine.
And yet the war has for something liketwo years now represented a stalemate.
Russia holds about one-fifthof Ukrainian territory, and

(11:32):
there seems to be nothing Ukrainecan do to expel Russia or
that Russia can do to beat the remainingfour-fifths of Ukraine into submission.
The casualties haveproven just staggering.
The Economist magazineestimates between 60 and
100,000 Ukrainians killed andsome 400,000 wounded.

(11:55):
And between 100,000 and140,000 Russians killed,
with something upward ofhalf a million wounded.
President Trump has promisedto deliver a ceasefire, but
in a recent press conferencehe gave another one yesterday.
This is a couple of days, a week or sobefore yesterday, he seemed to suggest

(12:15):
that one aspect of the deal would bea promise to deny Ukraine entry into NATO.
Putin seemed to laugh that off,as if he's going to hold out for
a much better deal than that.
How will this end?
What will Putin take?
And is that a dealDonald Trump should make?

>> Stephen Kotkin (12:38):
Yeah, we've been around the bush on this question, you and I,
a little bit over the years.
Now, this is the third year ofthe full-scale invasion coming up in
a few weeks, the third year anniversary.
Again, I think we need tostep back a little bit here.
On the one hand, we have this televisionshow known as The Court of Mar-a-Largo.

(13:05):
And right now the ratings are really good.
Everyone's watching the show.
You have this court societywith an American TV version
of European Castle filtered through Vegas,right?
It's kind of like a casino meetsHill Castle in Italy, right?

>> Peter Robinson (13:26):
Yeah, okay.

>> Stephen Kotkin (13:27):
Right, and there are all these big personalities there besides
King Donald, or would be King Donald,and they're jockeying for airtime.
And some of them own the air thatthey can not just jockey for, but
command that they'rethe center of attention.
And so it's a show.

(13:48):
And now there's gonna be government,
there's gonna bea congress with razor-thin
majorities on the Republican side.
There's gonna be complexissues like budgets,
which they haven't been able to dosince you and I had black hair.

(14:11):
There's gonna be world events thatimpinge on them that they don't control.
And you remember well,from the White House what that feels like.
The best-laid plans, as it were, that'sall coming, and that's coming very soon.
So now we're in the TV show phaseof this where we have news cycles,

(14:33):
and we have ratings, andwe have this Court of Mar-a-Largo.
You can't be a king in the Americansystem because it was designed precisely,
as you know better than anybody,to prevent that eventuality.
So there's all sorts of ways thatthe executive branch is tied up in

(14:55):
knots trying to get things done.
So they can gain people's attention.
And certainly, Donald Trump has done that.
He has people's attention.
But now he's got to govern,he's got to deliver.
And these are intractable problemsdomestically and internationally.

(15:17):
Let's remember that President Obamawanted nothing to do with Ukraine.
It was solow down his list of priorities after
Putin seized Crimea thatObama gave the Ukraine
portfolio to the vice president,Joe Biden.

(15:40):
Funerals and Ukraine.

>> Peter Robinson (15:43):
And Ukraine.

>> Stephen Kotkin (15:44):
Those were Biden's portfolios.
Biden wanted to wash his hands of Ukraine.
He had bigger fish to fry.
It interceded on his presidency.
Putin interceded on byObama's White House.
So now we have President Trump, andhe's not very invested in Ukraine.

(16:06):
He'd like it to go away.
He'd like to pull that proverbialchain that we all remember
on the toilets growing up.
Now, there's a handle, butback in the day, it was a chain, and
you pulled it, and [SOUND] sound,and things went away.
So Trump has that view, andit's the same view that Obama had,

(16:28):
vis à vis Ukraine ironically.
He'd like it to go away.
But here's his problem.
Joe Biden fled in the middle ofthe night from Afghanistan, and
his presidency never recovered.

>> Peter Robinson (16:44):
It never did recover.

>> Stephen Kotkin (16:47):
His ratings tanked immediately after
the withdrawal from Afghanistan andstayed down.
Maybe that wasn't the only cause.
There were probably many causes to that,but sure looks more than coincidental.
Americans hate war, but if you're ina war, they hate losing even more.

(17:12):
And so Donald Trump risks becomingthe Joe Biden of Ukraine,
having his own Afghanistan,where Trump began to
withdraw from Afghanistanbefore Biden came in.
Biden inherited the problem,made it worse, and took the blame.

(17:33):
And Trump got none of the blame,even though he was also responsible.
And now Putin has a chanceto humiliate America and
Ukraine on Biden's watch,he hands it over to Trump.
And now Trump,if he leaves in the middle of the night,

(17:54):
the way Biden did of Afghanistan,what does that do to his presidency?
Think about Nixon.
We all remember Nixon.
Well, some of us remember Nixon.

>> Peter Robinson (18:06):
Some of us remember. You and I do.

>> Stephen Kotkin (18:07):
I played Nixon in school during the school debates when we
were young.
I was the only one,everyone else wanted to play the Democrat.
And I volunteered to be Nixonin the mock debate that we had.

>> Peter Robinson (18:23):
Nixon, some other kid played Humphrey?

>> Stephen Kotkin (18:25):
Yeah. >> Peter Robinson
Some other kid, the rest of the class played Humphrey.

>> Peter Robinson (18:32):
So you've been swimming against the stream a long time, Stephen.

>> Stephen Kotkin (18:35):
Well. >> Peter Robinson
I was young then.
I didn't really know what I was doing.
I'm older now.
I still don't know what I'm doing.
And so what happened with Nixon?
He promised to end the Vietnam War.
He wanted out.
It was tearing the country apart.
It was clearly not going well.
He wanted out.

(18:55):
He gets elected.
He comes into office, turns out the NorthVietnamese don't wanna negotiate with him.
He's promising to get out, andthe other side says, screw you.
Literally.
So what does Nixon do?
He decides to bomb the Smithereensout of the North Vietnamese and

(19:18):
the adjacent countries.

>> Peter Robinson (19:20):
He mines Haiphong Harbor?

>> Stephen Kotkin (19:22):
Because he's escalating to deescalate.
So Trump now is confrontedwith either a Joe Biden-esque,
middle of the night,fleeing from Ukraine and
bearing the burden of that loss onhis presidency on American prestige.

(19:45):
Or a kind of Nixon-esque, well,if the other side won't talk and
do what we want,we'll have to escalate to deescalate.
So that's a really big dilemma for Trump.
So when he promises to endin the war in 24 hours,
what's he really talking aboutwhen he says now it's 100 days?

(20:06):
His announced special representative,Keith Kellogg,
retired military officer,has now elongated that to 100 days,
and now they are elongatingit to six months.
They may elongate it to four yearsof his presidency before too long.
And it's because, as in the case ofthe North Vietnamese, it's not clear that

(20:30):
President Putin wants to deliver some typeof victory to incoming President Trump.
Why would he do that?
There's insufficient pressureon Putin to force a deal.

>> Peter Robinson (20:44):
Okay, so here's where one of the many places you are expert, and
that is the workings ofthe Russian government.
I don't understand howa president of any country.
I know, I know, it's not reallya democracy, but still, he has
to have the support of a lot of people tocontinue to operate that chain of command,

(21:08):
to continue to supply his generalsat the front with fresh soldiers,
even holding a fifth of the country,even in a stalemate.
He's losing a lot of people every week.
His navy's been humiliated.
I don't understand why thereisn't pressure on him,
why he doesn't feel pressure.

(21:29):
He's got to wrap this up or what?
He's not gonna lose an election.
Will his generals turn on him?
I guess the man who didtry to turn on him.

>> Stephen Kotkin (21:42):
Prigozhin.

>> Peter Robinson (21:43):
Prigozhin, ends up with an unfortunate airplane accident.

>> Stephen Kotkin (21:48):
Somehow that plane blew up.

>> Peter Robinson (21:50):
So essentially we're talking.
So he has all the levers of power.
There's no one who canput pressure on him.
Is that the way it works?

>> Stephen Kotkin (21:59):
You got a couple of things going on here.
First, there's a collective actionproblem in authoritarian regimes.
Suppose you andI get together and we say that.
I say to you, Peter, President Putinis ruining this country and

(22:24):
we have to do something about it.
Your first instinct is that Putinhas sent me to test your loyalty.
Even if you think the same thing that Ithink, you think he's ruining the country,
the first thing you do is stand up andsay, how dare you say that?

(22:46):
And the second thing you do is you runto Putin's staff and you tattle on me.

>> Peter Robinson (22:52):
Rat on you.

>> Stephen Kotkin (22:53):
Because you're trying to protect yourself.
You assume that it's a provocationto test your loyalty.
So how do you overcome that level of
distrust inside an authoritarianregime like that?
It's really, really hard.

>> Peter Robinson (23:11):
You're essentially saying that the best way to understand
the Russian government is to watchold episodes of the Sopranos.
It's a thug regime.

>> Stephen Kotkin (23:18):
The best way to understand old episodes of the Sopranos is
to study the Russian government.
I'm with you on that.
So that's one piece.

>> Peter Robinson (23:30):
All right. >> Stephen Kotkin
something we call negative selection.
Negative selection is a term,it's a jargon from sociology.
It means I'm going toappoint people to top
positions preciselybecause they're stupid.
They're too stupid to figureout how to overthrow me,

(23:52):
and so I'll be safe if Iappoint the stupidest people
I can find to the highest positions.
This is typical for authoritarian regimes.
So your defense ministeris a construction foreman.
He finally got cashieredafter mishandling the war.

(24:14):
The cost of negative selection isyou get imbeciles in positions
like defense minister, which is finein peacetime, but once you go to war,
you've chosen loyalty over competenceagain and again and again.
And you've done this on purpose,this negative selection.

(24:36):
War has a way of auditingpeople's capabilities.
It's kind of like doctors.
All doctors are amazing,until you get sick.
Right.

>> Stephen Kotkin (24:48):
And as soon as you get sick,
it turns out that somedoctors aren't very good.
Well, as soon as you go to war,it turns out that your loyalists
aren't very good in many cases,but they're loyal, and
they're also incapable of figuringout how to take you down.
Now, remember, he controls the military.

(25:11):
He controls forces thatare a threat to your regime.
So actually, the worst people,in terms of competence,
are often in the most powerfulpositions in these regimes.
So that mitigates againsttaking Putin down,
making him pay a price for his mistakes.

(25:32):
In addition to the fear, the collectiveaction problem, remember Mubarak's regime?
It was a military regime.

>> Peter Robinson (25:41):
Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt.

>> Stephen Kotkin (25:44):
Yeah, and he's old, has cancer.
His son Gamal is not taken seriouslyby anybody as a successor.
But the military guysthat he has appointed,
they're really unimpressive,that's why he promoted them.
And they wait andthey hesitate and they do nothing.

(26:04):
And they can't move againstMubarak to save the country,
even though, to save the countryfrom their point of view,
even though he's 80, has cancer,and his son is a non-entity, why?
Because they are non entities.
And so that's the second problem.

(26:25):
And the third problem of why thispersists on the Russian side,
despite the costs,is that this is who Putin is.
This is his life work.
He has dedicated himself heart andsoul to this.
This is not something that he did andcan walk away from.

(26:47):
Everything, sometimes youwalk into that casino and
you push all the chips ontoone little tiny double zero or
zero or red or black,that's what he's done.
So what's Putin doing here?

(27:08):
He wants to eliminateUkraine as a viable state.
This is not about NATO expansion and himbeing under threat from NATO expansion.
As you know, NATO is an allianceof pacifist countries with
small defense budgets that don'tever wanna fight a war again.

(27:30):
And they threaten nobody but themselves.

>> Peter Robinson (27:33):
Okay.

>> Stephen Kotkin (27:34):
And so he's wants to eliminate Ukraine.
Look at this thing,he's talking to the Poles and
the Romanians from 2014, 2016.
Why don't you take the piecesof Ukraine you used to control?
Why don't we just dismemberthis thing together?

(27:56):
And they look at him like,what century do you live in?
But that's his mentality.
And so he wants this Ukrainian stateto go away and become just a rump.
If the Poles and Romanians,quote, won't take their peace,
he'll take his peace and leave justan unviable rump, that's the goal here.

(28:17):
And so for him,it's not about winning and losing the war
in some military sense,where you get this much terror.
It's about destroying the viabilityof a Ukrainian state forever.
He's bombing museums, cultural centers.

(28:39):
They're looting all the culturalartifacts that prove
Ukraine is a separate nation from Russia.
That's what this is about.
And so where do you compromise with that,where's the deal with something like that?
The Ukrainians are fighting an existentialstruggle for their existence.

(29:03):
Whether one thinks Americashould be involved in that or
not is a debate that you've had withmany people on your excellent program.
But that's incontrovertible,that's the struggle for them,
it's existential for them.
By the way, look at this,America was inert.
The Russians were salaaming,salaaming, salaaming America.

>> Peter Robinson (29:26):
Ukraine.

>> Stephen Kotkin (29:27):
Everywhere in the region, Georgia, everywhere.
And it wasn't until the Ukrainiansstood up that we stood up next to them.
Same thing happened in the Middle East.
Iranians salaming, salaming,
salaming American power inthe Middle east everywhere.

(29:50):
And finally, for the country forwhom it was existential,
they couldn't take it, they stood up.

>> Peter Robinson (29:58):
Beebe said, that's enough.

>> Stephen Kotkin (30:00):
They stood up, and then we stood up kind of alongside them,
not maybe full throttle,not maybe understanding
what was at stake andwhat the Israelis were gonna do.
But in both the case of Ukraine andin Israel, it was existential for

(30:23):
the country on the frontline that pushed America and
Europe in the case of Ukraine,but America and
other Sunni Arab states in the caseof Israel in the Middle East.
And so this was not a plan that wehad to succor Russia into this.

(30:47):
When this was about to hit,we evacuated our embassy.
We destroyed up to $70million worth of equipment at
our embassy in Kiev before fleeing.
We weren't ready to stand up for this.
And so the Ukrainians did that all creditto them for their courage and ingenuity.

(31:12):
This is their survival at stake.
So on our side, if you think about it,
Putin will continue until he's afraid forhis regime.
He will choose his regime over hisversion of victory in Ukraine.

(31:35):
So if his regime is at stake,if he feels a threat to domestically,
to his regime,then you could see an armistice,
a deal that was acceptable to Ukraine andour European partners.
But what did we take off the table fromthe get go, pressure on Putin's regime.

>> Peter Robinson (31:59):
Russia.

>> Stephen Kotkin (32:01):
We took that off the table because it was escalatory.
It could potentially lead to a conflictdirectly, between the US And Russia,
US, NATO, and Russia.
So let's take that off the table.
We escalate on the battlefield, wherePutin is stronger, he's got more people.
And he doesn't care about their lives,and so he can throw them to their deaths.

(32:26):
And so we're in a war of attrition,
with an authoritarian regime thatdoesn't care about the value of life.
And we escalate on the battlefield,maybe slowly, according to some critics.
Maybe not everything we could havedone according to those critics.
But we incurred the escalatoryrisk on the battlefield,

(32:51):
in a war of attrition, on the side of asmaller country against a larger country.
A quasi democratic country,against a clearly authoritarian regime.
And we refused to escalatein the political space,
cuz we were afraid that thatescalation would be too dangerous.
As a result of which,where are we now in the war?

(33:15):
And sountil we apply pressure to his regime.
Now remember, we're getting accused ofregime change 24/7 in Russian propaganda.
So we're being charged with the crime,
while doing nothing forthat regime change.

(33:36):
And so we're getting accused anyway.
We're escalating on the battlefieldanyway, and yet here we are.

>> Peter Robinson (33:43):
So, Stephen,
are you saying,>> Stephen Kotkin: So
this is three years now.
Would your advice to Donald Trump be,
to take a page from Reagan andapply new pressure,
even if at least initially,it's only rhetorical or diplomatic?
Is it time to give speeches calling Putin,in effect, the leader of an evil empire?

(34:07):
Is it time to do whatBibi Netanyahu has done,
at least according to my Twitter feed.
Two or three times now,he's recorded speeches with social media,
you can do this now.
In which he's directlyaddressing the people of Iran,
he's talking to the people of Iran,past their leaders.

>> Stephen Kotkin (34:24):
That's right.

>> Peter Robinson (34:26):
Donald Trump should talk to the people of Russia and say,
we have no quarrel with you.
You're the inheritors of a greatcivilization and culture.
Begin planning,Vladimir Putin will not live forever.
That kind of thing?

>> Stephen Kotkin (34:42):
You said a page from Reagan.

>> Peter Robinson (34:44):
Yes. >> Stephen Kotkin
the whole book?
How about everything?
The entire book and then some.
All right.

>> Stephen Kotkin (34:52):
So yes, yes, and yes again, here's the thing.
We often think that pressureon Putin's regime comes from
the democratic opposition.
Usually they're in exile, orthey're in prison if they didn't get out,
or refused to leave and were willing.

>> Peter Robinson (35:15):
Where accidents happen.

>> Stephen Kotkin (35:16):
Willing to go to prison for their beliefs, and oppose the regime.
Several of them have died inmysterious circumstances,
most prominently Alexei Navalny,who died in a prison.
We think about those people.
Many of those peopleare unbelievably courageous.

(35:38):
We know them fromthe Soviet times as well.
And Reagan paid close attention to them,you were there.
Met with them when he went to Moscow,
as well as meeting with Gorbachev,despite the fact that there was
pressure against him from our ownState Department not to do that.

(35:58):
Reagan instead did the right thing.
I'm saying something slightly different.
Our best hope in the short term,are the Russian
nationalists who are hurting fortheir country.

(36:18):
They're not democrats,they're not pro Western,
they're not big on human rights.
But they don't want theircountry blood white.
And they are hurting for their country,because they're patriots.
And they're those guys that I alluded to,that know that Putin is ruining the place,

(36:40):
but can't discuss it among themselves andsurvive.
So not only does Donald Trumphave to speak directly to
the Russian people about how thisguy is ruining your country,
he's gotta offer a deal toelites who might displace Putin.
They might not have read the noteson the Constitutional Convention.

(37:08):
They might not be familiar withthe writings of Thomas Jefferson.
Checks andbalances may be anathema to them.
But they love their country,and they see it has mortgaged,
if not abandoned its future entirelyto a chimerical pursuit that

(37:31):
everybody is losing,including Russia and the Russians.
And what's on offer for them if they act?
If they move?
What's the package of rehabilitation,of diplomacy, of deal making?
Not to reward the aggression, but

(37:54):
to reward a retrenchmentfrom the aggression.
It doesn't solve your longterm trajectory of Russia.
For that,you need that Reagan esque approach to
the democratic oppositionin certain forms.
But it does solve your immediateproblem of this terrible war that's so

(38:18):
costly and so devastating to the Russianpeople, as well as in the first instance,
the Ukrainian people whoare on the front lines.
And sothis is a sophisticated political gambit.
It requires, like Reagan understood,investment in deterrence.

(38:39):
You always have to cast the shadow of yourmilitary might over the negotiating table,
as George Shultz put itmore eloquently than I did.
And that is Reagan understood betterthan anybody in his administration,
employing Schultz asan instrument in this regard.

(39:00):
You build it up, andyou negotiate simultaneously.
You appeal to the Russian people.
But there's a deal on offer for
the retrenchers who are your instrument,domestic, they exist.
We're recruiting them, our intelligenceagencies are recruiting them,

(39:21):
so that they can deliver insideinformation to us about what's going on.
That's information you can readon the Russian telegram channels.

>> Peter Robinson (39:31):
Right. >> Stephen Kotkin
Right. >> Stephen Kotkin
valuable it is, maybe it's morevaluable than I'm guessing.
We need not to recruit themto deliver information, but
we need to recruit them foran alternative Russia that doesn't
threaten its neighbors,even if it's authoritarian at home.
We need to help them save their own country.

>> Stephen Kotkin (39:51):
Yes, we do.
Now, ultimately,they're the ones that have to do this.

>> Peter Robinson (39:55):
Right.

>> Stephen Kotkin (39:56):
It's on them, just as it is in Iran.
Just as it is anywhere else we could name,and
we've seen in Syria very recently,
we've seen in Syria that theseregimes are all powerful and
brittle simultaneously.

(40:17):
And they one moment they look impregnable,
and in the same moment they can be undone,
implode, like in a bank run.
And so that vulnerability is deep,it's entrenched, it's endemic, and
it's always there.
Every day is existential forPutin's regime, even though he's

(40:40):
got the levers of power, the repressiveapparatus, that stuff can flip.
We've seen it in Syria recently,we saw it in the Soviet case
when you were writingthose important speeches,
the one that you alluded to,write that speech for Trump.
Go down to that Las Vegas Tuscan villa.

>> Peter Robinson (41:05):
Mar-a-Lago.

>> Stephen Kotkin (41:06):
And see if you can meet with them and
offer them a version of that speech.

>> Peter Robinson (41:11):
They need you, Steven Israel [COUGH] this past summer,
Antony Blinken, our own Secretary ofState, said that Iran's breakout time.
The time needed to produce enough weaponsgrade material for nuclear weapons, and
now I'm quoting him.
These are his words,is now probably one or two weeks,

(41:31):
Iran already possesses ballistic missiles.
On October 1st, they demonstrated thatthey were willing to use them against
Israel with a ballistic missile attack.
So you've got ballistic missiletechnology done a week or
two to fissile material,done another year,

(41:54):
maybe two,to develop deliverable warheads.
Is that state of affairsacceptable to the state of Israel?
And recently on this program, I askedthat very question to Natan Sharansky.

>> Stephen Kotkin (42:07):
Yes.

>> Peter Robinson (42:07):
And he replied, quote,
that state of affairs is absolutelyunacceptable to the state of Israel.
In Israel, I'm quoting Natan Sharansky, inIsrael, everyone is asking one question.
When we have to take outIran's nuclear program,
not if,when will the United States go in with us?

>> Stephen Kotkin (42:30):
I saw that program,
you've had many great programs sincethe last time I was on this show.

>> Peter Robinson (42:36):
It's been too long.

>> Stephen Kotkin (42:37):
That's not the point,
the point is that you'vehad many great programs.
So let's think this through, whatdirection is that Iranian regime headed,
are they on an upward trajectory?
They are toast, could be tomorrow,could be a generation from now,

(42:58):
they have no legitimacy at home, theyare despised by their people, despised.
There's not ambivalence, there's hated for
that regime,that regime is not very young.
Their supreme leader, I mean, he couldrun for president of the United States,
he's old.

>> Peter Robinson (43:18):
He's that old.

>> Stephen Kotkin (43:18):
Yeah.
I mean, he is done, and
they face a succession struggleof who might Take over for him.
Which is a moment of enormousvulnerability for them,
they have their own security apparatus.
Their own generals, their topgenerals talking about the defeat

(43:40):
that they suffered in Syria andthe terrible consequences.
What happened to their proxies,Hezbollah in Lebanon,
their own top people in the highest jobs,responsible for
the military, secret police,the paramilitaries,

(44:02):
the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij.
They know the handwriting is on the wall,again,
it doesn't necessarily mean we geta democratic government in Iran.
That would be the hope, we would loveto see that in the first instance for
the Iranian people, not just forthe neighbors in the region.

(44:27):
It's a tough region, there aren'tvery many democracies in that region.
So that remains to be seenwhat the outcome might be,
what might replace this regime.
We could well get a militarysecurity regime without
the mullahs that resemblesthe Shah's regime.

>> Peter Robinson (44:47):
Which we'd take.

>> Stephen Kotkin (44:49):
Yes.
So the question then for Israel and for
the United States is,should we do something
which turns the Iranian people against us?
Should we risk wrecking that country sothat, for example,

(45:12):
they don't have electricity,they don't have water supply,
they're starving, there's no food.
Should we act in sucha way when we're trying to
punish the mullahs, the Islamist regime.
And we punish the civilian population so

(45:34):
that the civilian population,which is now on our side.
And on Israel's side to an extent that
was unimaginable not that long ago,openly so.
Should we give them reasonsto rally around the flag and
potentially be angry at us becauseof the grief that we caused.

(46:00):
Or should we maintainthe external pressure,
ratchet up the external pressure,watch this thing implode.
Have the Iranian people do itthemselves and thank us for
assisting them in takingtheir country back?

(46:21):
That's the question,
if you act against that nuclear threat,
what else do you get in the bargain?
What other unintended consequences,
potentially perverse in unintendedconsequences, come along with that?

(46:42):
And so, I'm not answering thatquestion because I don't have the full
access to intelligence that the Israelis,
the Americans have,I have no security clearance at all.
They may know things that are materialthat I don't know about the state of play,
and you alluded toBlinken's public remarks.

(47:03):
There's a credibility issue there for
me when the Biden administrationis speaking about foreign policy.
Issues that they were not front and centeron for a long time or very effective on.
But let's take him at his word, andlet's say there is that real threat,

(47:24):
the vulnerabilities of that regime are sograve.
And the possibilities in a positivesense of the implosion are so
enticing that I wouldcarefully weigh action
internal to Iran versus external pressure.
Now, again,I could be wrong because I'm not as well

(47:49):
informed as some otherswho are closer to this.
But let's think about whatIsrael has achieved already.

>> Peter Robinson (47:55):
An enormous amount.

>> Stephen Kotkin (47:56):
Right.
Dragging us along kicking andscreaming the same way
the Ukrainian thing happened,where we wanna take credit for
the actions, the courage andthe ingenuity of the locals.
And some credit is deserved on our part,

(48:17):
but it's clearly the localsthat are driving this.
So the Palestinian Arabs,they've lost the war.
They've lost this war again andagain and again.
And each time they lose the war,they lose it worse.

(48:39):
And their civilians pay the price forthis.

>> Peter Robinson (48:42):
Their civilians pay.

>> Stephen Kotkin (48:43):
Those elites continue to refuse to accept defeat,
and the consequences are that in 1937,
they could have had approximately75% of historic Palestine.
And they said, no, we want 100%.
And in 1947, 48,they could have had 55% approximately,

(49:08):
of historic power, said,no, we want it all.
And then you have 67 and 73.
And by the time you get to the 2000s,
22% of historic Palestine is now on offer.
Now we're in 2025, what percentageof historic Palestine is on offer?

>> Peter Robinson (49:29):
Under BB Netanyahu, zero.

>> Stephen Kotkin (49:32):
Correct, so they've lost the war again and
again, worse each time.
And their civilians pay the price.
And people over here,people over here are siding
with Hamas and the Palestinian leadership.
You can side with the Palestinian peopleas the victims in the middle of this.

(49:56):
Those children, those mothers,the place is at ruin and
will be at ruin forthe rest of their lives.
And that hurts to see that.
So they've lost the war,they refuse to accept defeat, but
what about the Israelis?

(50:16):
They've won the war.
They've won the war again andagain and again.
And each time they win the war,they win it bigger than the last time.
When are they gonna win the peace?
What's the plan for winning the peace?
They've proven that they can win the war,but

(50:38):
where's the long-term strategy forwinning the peace?
It doesn't matter if you win the war andyou don't win the peace.
America did that in Afghanistan,we won the war, we lost the peace.
We lost the peace.

>> Peter Robinson (50:51):
We lost the peace.

>> Stephen Kotkin (50:52):
In fact, Peter, you can lose the war and
win the peace,which is what we did in Vietnam.
There's no way to describe Vietnamother than a loss for America.
But in the fullness of time,despite the atrocities we committed there,
it's a pro-American country.

(51:14):
You can argue that inthe fullness of time,
we won the peace in Vietnam withoutwinning the war, we lost that war.
So how do the Israelis win the peace?
That's the question in front ofthe Netanyahu government and
the Israeli establishment.
And it's been that question for our entirelifetimes and they haven't had an answer.

(51:36):
And so I need an answer.
I know about the Hamas side,the Palestinian Authority.
I understand losing the war andfighting it again and again.
I understand how suicidal that is fortheir civilian population.

(51:56):
Those people have only one life to liveand it's been sacrificed on their behalf.
But I need Israel to win the peace,I need a plan that makes sense.
Not win the war in the next incarnation,but end the war,
consolidate a peaceful settlementthat works for everybody.

(52:20):
And instead, what I'm seeing isincursion into Syrian territory,
which is not Israeli territory,and could be argued is
a violation of the ceasefireagreement that the Israelis have.
They argue that it'sbeen rendered null and

(52:41):
void because of the overthrow of Assad.
Again, these are argumentsthat have deep and
profound sets of questions thatare not easy to answer and
that there are multiplesides to the issue.
But I need to see the Israelis movingtowards a strategy, not a tactics,

(53:03):
but a strategy of winningthe peace in the region,
because they're the onesthat need the peace.
Israel is the success.

>> Peter Robinson (53:11):
Here's the answer, I have no idea whether I'm
right about this, but here's an answer.
Here's what we Israelis can do.
And this is all we can do,but it's not nothing.
We can become sostrong that we can enforce
peace in this region for two generations.

(53:35):
And then we have an opportunity when thesehorrible hatreds begin to be forgotten,
when they begin to fade fromthe memory of the Palestinians or
these poor people in southern Lebanon,the civilians who are the casualties.

>> Stephen Kotkin (53:50):
Yes.

>> Peter Robinson (53:52):
Then we can begin talking about an expansion of
a region-wide marketplace,then we can have peace.
But right now, all that history is givingus the opportunity to do is defend
the state of Israel with such strengththat we are unquestionably unassailable.
And then wait, two generations.

(54:13):
Is that an answer?

>> Stephen Kotkin (54:15):
I'm 100% in favor of Israeli strength and
defending their security.
And it's been very impressive to watch.

>> Peter Robinson (54:25):
It has been.

>> Stephen Kotkin (54:27):
Very impressive.
Kudos to them, to that wholenational security establishment,
to that whole society,cuz they fight as a whole society,
not just as a separate 1% military.
It's amazing, just as it's been inUkraine, but in different ways and

(54:47):
a different scale,it's been amazing to watch.
The courage and ingenuity, the strength,the brilliance of the intelligence and
some of the tactical thingsthat they've pulled off.
Breathtaking and gonna be studied fora really long time.
And so hats off to them.

(55:11):
Okay, what are the costs to all of that?
The costs not just twogenerations from now, but
every day during thosetwo generations of yours.
Those cost to Israeli society,they're militarized.
Everybody serves in the military there,and

(55:32):
everybody's in the reserveon call at any moment.
Even if they run businesses,they have bakeries that feed the people.
They can get called up in a second forthe model that you're talking about.
The impact on their lives,the impact on the GDP of the country,

(55:54):
what they've built in the desert.

>> Peter Robinson (55:57):
Amazing. >> Stephen Kotkin
why isn't that also partof the calculation,
the strength part for sure, butwhat else in addition to that?
Again, let's take morethan a page from Reagan,
it's the strength plus the diplomacy,right?

(56:20):
It's the deal making, if you'restrong enough to get a good deal,
that's great, butyou got to get the good deal.
You gotta get the [INAUDIBLE].

>> Stephen Kotkin (56:30):
You actually have to want to negotiate, and
you got to pocket the concessionsthat your strength is eliciting.
So you need a vision ofwhere you're going, again,
let's take that book,you need a vision of where you're going.
[COUGH] And you need to be able totake less than 100% in negotiations,

(56:56):
because nobody ever gets100% in a negotiation.
You got to do a deal, what's the deal?
So I agree with you, the investmentin the strength has paid off,
it's been necessary, andit's paid off in space, I just need more.

(57:19):
Maybe the answer would be that this isas much as you can get in that region.

>> Peter Robinson (57:24):
Mm-hm.

>> Stephen Kotkin (57:25):
You can't hope for more, and that could be true, but
let's test that theory.
There's a lot of theories I wanna test,people say money can't buy happiness.
[LAUGH] I wanna test that theory.

>> Peter Robinson (57:38):
[LAUGH] Stephen, a couple of last questions here,
let me return you to the President Electof the United States, Donald J Trump.
[COUGH] Here's a tweet by Donald Trump 72hours ago as we record this conversation.

(58:00):
Greenland is an incredible place, and thepeople will benefit tremendously if and
when it becomes part of our Nation,Make Greenland Great Again.
I'm giving you first Donald Trump, andthen I want to come to Richard Nixon.
Add to that tweet President Trump'srecent comments that he wants to return

(58:20):
the Panama Canal to the United States.
And add to that tweets andcomments that Canada should consider
becoming the 51st American state,that's Donald Trump.
Now, let me give you Richard Nixon,this is Nixon as quoted in his chief
of staff Bob Haldeman's memoir,it's Nixon talking to Haldeman.

(58:44):
Since you did Nixon in a debate,I feel myself slipping into my Nixon here,
I call it the madman theory, Bob.

>> Stephen Kotkin (58:51):
I remember- >> Peter Robinson
theory, Bob, I wanna the North Vietnameseto believe I've reached the point,
I Nixon.
I've reached the pointwhere I might do anything,
we'll just slip the word to them that wecan't restrain Nixon when he's angry and
he has his hand on the nuclear button.
And Ho Chi Minh himself will be inParis in two days begging for Peace.

(59:14):
Greenland, are we seeingthe madman theory of
international affairs in Donald Trump,what is going on?
Again, it's a great TV show.
[LAUGH] The Court of Mar-a-Lago,King Donald,
you're probably not gonna be shockedto learn that I'm not watching,

(59:35):
I'm not on social media,I don't watch television.
Sometimes it's on in the gym, but I,
with no sound, andI see the screen, of course,
it's red army channel,10 screens long, MSNBC.
So I don't know reallywhat's going on with that,

(59:58):
because I'm not paying attention.
Let me just say that the madman theory forNixon, it didn't work.
[LAUGH] So whether it was true ornot, if it were true,
it still didn't help him very much,did it?
I mean, after all,we know the results of Vietnam,

(01:00:20):
the madman theory, sohere's your challenge, it's a big one.
There's not enough American powerin The World, that's your problem.
That's your number one problem in TheWorld today, insufficient American power.
That's going to sound paradoxical,

(01:00:43):
the left blames America foreverything right and
wants America overthrown at home,let alone abroad.
And the right doesn't like America gettinginvolved abroad in other people's business
because it feels there's enough businessat home for us to get involved in.

(01:01:06):
So the left and the right,in horseshoe fashion,
are coming together on thiscritique of American power.
Which we're hearing not from everybodyin the orbit of Court of Mar-a-Lago?
But we're hearing it from some of them and
some of the more prominentmembers of that group.

(01:01:27):
But Donald Trump,he wants to play the strongman,
he wants to be taken as a strongman.
And part of the strongman is to bluff and
bully and that's what he's doing.
And the interesting thing about Americanpower, where does it come from,

(01:01:48):
where does American power come from?
Well, it comes from our political system,which is immortal,
the institutions are so rich andso deep and so fabulous.
That no matter how manytimes we try to ruin them,
they prove their durability andthey prove us wrong.

(01:02:13):
It comes from the institutions, it comesfrom the free and open society and
the dynamic market economy.
No matter how many times we wannaregulate it to death and strangle and
suffocate entrepreneurialism.
And tax it till it can't breathe,it finds a way and
produces the wealth thatno other country in

(01:02:38):
recorded history has ever produced.
And I could go on, butAmerican power also comes from
our friends, from our allies,from our partners.
You see, they multiply our power,we have almost 80
treaty relationships withother countries globally.

(01:03:03):
Those are voluntary and legally binding,other countries have come to us and
said, we want mutual obligations with you.
We wanna partner with you,we wanna be friends,
we wanna be allies with you, imagine that.

>> Peter Robinson (01:03:21):
Including Canada.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:03:22):
It's just stunning, no other power in recorded
history has ever had that number of treatyrelationships with other countries.
Again, this is not a sphere ofinfluence that we're imposing by force,

(01:03:43):
these are voluntaryrelationships of mutual benefit.
They're win win, they're not zero sum,and we have them all over,
you alluded to Israel, you could haveadded UAE and Saudi, and we could go on.
So it's not justthe transatlantic alliance,

(01:04:06):
it's also the Pacific.
And sothat's a superpower of our superpower.
We would want to deepen those relationships.
In some cases,they could use a little renovation,
like our kitchens or our bathrooms orthings that still work but

(01:04:29):
maybe they were built in a differentepoch under different circumstances.
Maybe the aesthetics are not aspleasing as they once were, right?
And so you renovate, you improve,you bring them up to date.
And so if you had that degree ofamplified power through relationships,

(01:04:54):
again, it's based uponour system of government.
It's based upon our free andopen society, dynamic economy,
but it's also about our soft power,our cultural power, our attraction.
Why are people trying tocross the border illegally?

(01:05:17):
Are they trying to cross the borderillegally because they're all terrorists
trying to destroy the country?
Some of them are, butthe vast majority of them,
they're coming becausethe streets are paved with gold,
figuratively speaking, andso we need to fix that.
And it's been partially fixed by, of allpeople, the Democrats, who exacerbated

(01:05:42):
the problem by going from 50,000illegal border crossings to 250,000 or
300,000, andnow we're back more towards 50,000.
They've instituted a Trumpian-like borderpolicy even before he gets in office.
My point is just that we have a good thinggoing here and we got a lot of friends.

(01:06:03):
You know from your own lifethat when you need a favor,
you've done other people favors andthey're ready to step up for you.
You know that when you get in trouble,there's somebody you can text
message with your thumbs, andthey're gonna be right there for you.

(01:06:24):
Because you were there for them or
because they're aligned withyou in terms of values, right?
And so, wow,how do you manage that better?
Clearly, there are imbalances,clearly, there's some free riding,
we could go back to everypresident from your lifetime,

(01:06:48):
how they've complained aboutthe imbalances and the free riding?
And we're partially at fault forencouraging that behavior and
rewarding it in some cases.
So I agree with President Trump that someof these relationships need a rebalancing.
They need updating for the 21st century,

(01:07:12):
the free riding has got to end inthe cases where it's happening.
Let's not accuse our friends of freeriding when they're not free riding.
So on the Greenland thing,->> Peter Robinson: Yeah.
I've never been to Greenland.

>> Peter Robinson (01:07:30):
Imagine that.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:07:31):
I've been around, but not to Greenland.
There are 57,000 or sopeople who live in Greenland.
If I were Trump,would I be threatening them with
military force, orwould I be bribing them?
$50 billion,>> Stephen Kotkin: Seems like

(01:07:55):
a lot of money,not compared to our federal budget,
not compared to a coupleof toys in the Pentagon.
$50 billion is a million dollarsper Greenlander, think about that.
Think about the kind of bargain youcould strike using your soft power,

(01:08:16):
your attractiveness, your deal making.
And saying you have rare earths andother valuable minerals underneath,
let's develop them together,we'll benefit and you benefit.
You sit on the Arctic waterway,which potentially
transforms international trade andgeopolitics.

(01:08:41):
Let's maybe see the kind of dealsthat we can do that benefit you and
that benefit us.
That would be an interesting proposition,
and then we would have to see what theysay because they're a sovereign nation.
Yes, technically,their security policy is under Denmark,
but Denmark does not own them andcontrol them.

(01:09:03):
And we don't have to do a dealwith Denmark necessarily,
we can do it with the Greenlandersif there's mutual benefit.
If Trump is up to the task of his art ofthe deal and his deal making, there's
a deal to be had that could attract theGreenlanders instead of repelling them.
And so why repel them, why threaten?

(01:09:26):
I understand the ratings go up forthe show,
Court of Mar-a-Lago, butthere's a better way to
enhance our securitythrough mutual benefit with
a population there that mightbe interested in a deal.
But I don't think we're gonna getto a deal this particular way.

(01:09:50):
I remember the schoolyardwhen I was growing up, and
I made friends with some people and theygenerally weren't the ones who beat me up.

>> Peter Robinson (01:10:01):
Stephen, question five.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:10:03):
Okay.

>> Peter Robinson (01:10:03):
Last question, give me a moment to set this up.
A tale of two decades, in the 1970s' economic stagnation,
the erosion of our position in the ColdWar, the humiliations of Vietnam and
Watergate, the 1980s' economic expansion.

(01:10:27):
The rebuilding of our military,the reassertion of national morale,
so effectively that 1984re-election campaign slogan,
morning again in America,may sound very sappy today.
But it sounded true enough to votersthat they gave him 49 out of 50 states.
One decade, 1979, this country is so

(01:10:49):
weak that the Soviets feel freeto go into Afghanistan and
the Iranians to take Americans hostage.
1989, one decade later,we've undergone such a renewal that it
spills over into the rest of the world andthe Berlin Wall falls.
Now, we have this election,the re-election of Donald Trump.

(01:11:13):
And a lot of people, as you know, I justtaped an interview with Marc Andreessen,
he's one of them, impressive,accomplished people.
Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk,David Sacks, Vivek Ramaswamy,
not to mention the millions ofAmericans who voted for him.
Now, some people voted forhim as least bad, but

(01:11:37):
a lot of people have their hopes up.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:11:40):
75 million people voted.

>> Peter Robinson (01:11:41):
75 million people voted for him, he won the popular vote.
National renewal, should we have our hopes up?
Can we do it again?
Does this feel to you like such a moment,or
are we gonna be muddling throughthe way we have been for decades?

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:12:01):
Yeah, you're returning to your first question here in some ways,
and it's exactly the right question,unsurprisingly from you.
Let's think of the landslides in Americanhistory, just the modern American history.
The landslides, more or less.
Four Roosevelt.

>> Peter Robinson (01:12:18):
32.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:12:20):
Landslide which was enduring.

>> Peter Robinson (01:12:23):
Yes, it was.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:12:23):
The country was changed.
It was not just realigned politically,
but it was fundamentallychanged in its institutions.
One can argue for better or for worse,that's a worthy question of debate.
But it was big.
The next one, Lyndon Johnson.

(01:12:46):
Lyndon Johnson, massive landslide.
Remember 64.

>> Peter Robinson (01:12:50):
64.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:12:51):
Barry Goldwater.

>> Peter Robinson (01:12:53):
Got buried.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:12:54):
Completely.
Lyndon Johnson didn't even run again.
He was gone.
He's a one term president.
What kind of landslide was that?
In some ways it was a false landslide.
Because it was the end.

(01:13:14):
Not yet, but it was the coming ofthe end of the Roosevelt realignment,
domestic transformation.
Because the next big landslideturns out to be Reagan and
it's the Goldwater platform that ison the other side of the landslide.

(01:13:34):
Not 100%, of course,Reagan was not Goldwater.
You know better than I dowhat the differences were.
But there's enough overlap between 64 and84 where one is a landslide one way and
the other is a landslideanother way to think.
That's interesting.

(01:13:55):
And that was another realignment,a fundamental
realignment of the politicalstructures in the US And
a partial, not a complete buta partial change,
fundamental change ofthe domestic institutions.

(01:14:15):
There was deregulation, tax cuts,
commitment to free enterprise,commitment to strength abroad.
For some people it didn't go far enough.
But there are constraints on politicians,as we know.

(01:14:36):
And so you have your two big fundamentaltransformations, realignments.
We could have talked aboutNixon's landslide and
he resigns not long after his landslide.
So LBJ andNixon gone in a flash and FDR and

(01:15:00):
Reagan much more enduring different
ways one way and then the other way.
So fundamental realignments inpolitical terms and even bigger in
institutional and socioeconomic,they don't happen very often.

(01:15:21):
They happen less frequentlythan landslides.
And landslides are also infrequent.
Certainly nothing since Reagan.
Okay, so it would be a tall order for
us to have a Reagan esque moment in that
direction that you're alluding to.

(01:15:44):
It would be a really tall order.
It would be about Trumpbeing Reagan esque and
it'd be about real policies gettingthrough the political system.
Not executive orders, butlaws passed by the Congress.
It would be about renewing communityties across the country at all levels.

(01:16:07):
It would be about somany things we're seeing some of that at
the state level, below the state level,in the counties.
There's a lot of optimism inmany places across the country.
Ironically, the tech revolutionhas not just empowered the coasts,

(01:16:28):
but moved beyond the coastsinto the interior,
empowering a lot of places inthe interior in extremely positive ways.

>> Peter Robinson (01:16:39):
Things are happening in Texas and Tennessee and Florida.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:16:43):
Yes, and in places that you're surprised but
shouldn't be surprised when you get there.
And so there's a lot of renewal underway.
And there's a hunger for renewal.
Is there the political entrepreneurialism,which requires not just a president.

(01:17:05):
Remember, Reagan's partner wasTip O'Neill from the other party.
It requires a lot.
But the system has deliveredthis before and it can deliver.
We were at a much lower point in the 70sthan any time we've reached since then.
Whether you're talking about polarization,
violence in the society,economic stagnation, inflation,

(01:17:30):
things have been imperfect more recently,but there has nothing been.
Been Nothing like the 70s,which of course,
Reagan reversed not alone, buthe was a huge part of that.
So one can be optimisticabout the possibility.
But it doesn't happen automatically.
It requires agency.

(01:17:52):
It requires that deaf touch,that political entrepreneur,
the person with a vision,not just with a news cycle.
It requires cooperation across the aisle.
In political terms,it requires so many things.
Success is about competent andcompassionate

(01:18:15):
leadership andsocial solidarity and trust.
Competent and compassionate leadership,social solidarity and trust.
It's in the society, it's there.
It has not been to the forefront.
This morning I did somethingthat I usually don't do.

(01:18:39):
I watched some television.
Not an actual television, but C span.
Because Jimmy Carter was memorialized in
that Grand Cathedral in D.C.that you know really well.
And it was a special moment.
Five living presidents,all in the same aisle of the cathedral.

(01:19:03):
And Jimmy Carter's casket withthe flag over it just a few feet away.
It was solemn, it was dignity,
and it was spiritual.

(01:19:25):
For believers and unbelievers,the spirituality was unmistakable.
Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school for
more years than most peoplelive on this planet.
He taught Sunday school while president,
including before being president andafter president.

(01:19:47):
And he read those Bibleverses on Sunday and
talked about the lessons from the Bible.
I don't know if there was a presidentever in United States history who was.
Readier to meet their Godthan Jimmy Carter was today.
It was very inspiring moment.
Yes.

(01:20:08):
The sitting president made a speech.
I stopped watching at that point.
I wanted the better parts ofthe event to be stuck in my memory.
There were some illusionsto partisan politics that I
didn't think were appropriate.

(01:20:28):
But Gerald Ford's son reada eulogy that Gerald Ford had
composed before his own death,because Jimmy Carter and
Gerald Ford had promised eachother that they would each
read eulogies at their funerals.
And Ford had an inkling.
He was 10 years or so older than Carter.

(01:20:51):
He had an inkling that he might go first.
Carter was alive when Gerald Ford died.
I guess it was 2006, maybe.
But obviously Gerald Fordwas not there today.
But his son read the text, and it wasa beautiful text about their friendship,

(01:21:13):
which they had forged on Air Force Onewhen President Carter brought former
President Ford to Anwar Sadat'sfuneral in the Middle East.

>> Steven Ford (01:21:24):
We told reporters on the plane that a lasting Middle east
peace would require the United Statesto make tough decisions like
confronting the Palestinianissue directly, thereby
building on the work to which PresidentSadat had literally given his life.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:21:48):
And, of course, Carter had done the deal with Sadat,
bringing peace between Israel andEgypt, which has lasted to this day and
is a foundation of Middle Eastern policy.
And Ford and Carter became friends,bitter enemies.
You know what the campaign was like,you know, the mudslinging,

(01:22:12):
you know, the disappointment in Ford,in losing.
All presidents are failures becausethat's how our system is designed.
Even Ronald Reagan, to an extent,didn't achieve everything,
but the system is a success.
And that was shown todayin that cathedral.
And that renewal is in there.

(01:22:34):
It's in those leaderswho can be competent and
compassionate like theywere at the funeral today.
And it's in the society that can regainthe social solidarity and trust.
And maybe it doesn't happen and
we're disappointed again,but let's give it a try.

>> Peter Robinson (01:22:53):
Stephen Kotkin, thank you for Uncommon Knowledge,
the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation.
I'm Peter Robinson.
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